Is This So What?

To: UOG readers

From: the blogger Johanna Sawyer (formerly HK Flynn; from back in the day when some of us kept our personal information off the internet.)

Here’s my premise: 

The tribulation judgments are far more central to the Gospel & evangelism in the NT, than to the Gospel in today's churches. 

Eschatology is now thought of as a very separate topic from the Gospel message. But this means there is a sharp difference between NT evangelism and our own evangelism. The tribulation/day of the Lord judgments have gone missing from our Gospel.

Is this a big, So What??

No, it really isn't, in my not so humble opinion.

It’s not a small shift. 

Because of it, we distort the Gospel. 

Objection #1 might be, Isn't the day of the Lord a vague expression with several meanings? 

I agree that it and similar expressions, that day, the day of wrath, the day of Christ, have a range of meanings. Bob Wilkin has shown that the day of Christ is a term pointing to the Bema seat judgment where believer’s deeds will be judged by their Savior. And the day of the Lord can mean the tribulation judgments (Daniel’s [final] week), but also the final war that apparently takes place at the end of the Millennial Kingdom.

Objection #2 might be, Isn't all of eschatology an absolute distraction from the discipleship issues we desperately need to focus on? 

I agree that discipleship issues are urgent and central, but see NT eschatology as key to filtering discipleship through a thoroughly biblical perspective that has the potential to add turbo-ness to all of our pathetically lame efforts.  (I'm an expert I'm afraid in that latter department.) And I would have to agree that eschatology is often weirdly severed from a devotional perspective.

But even if a pastor decides he does not want the coming judgments as part of evangelism in his church, there is still a reason for close study of this Gospel shift out, where we shift out the topic of the day of the lord judgments, and shift in the topic of Hell. 

The Apostles clearly taught Hell.  

But they usually preached Joel’s day of wrath in their Gospel preaching.  This can be seen in the Acts sermons of Peter (in Acts Ch 2) and Paul (Ch 16), in Romans, and in John the Baptist’s preaching.

 

For the Apostles, the day of wrath prophesies of Joel were solidly linked with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel in general.    

But again, many will ask, So what?

This is what. We risk falsifying the Gospel whenever we fully conflate ideas the NT writers did not. 

What two ideas do we conflate? 

When we conflate Hell with the judgments of the Earth, we pull in repentance to a place the NT writers never brooked.

Don't get me wrong. The urgent message of repentance is necessary to prepare for the Kingdom.  Repentance gets regenerate individuals ready for being presented with all the church as the bride.  Repentance gets nations to give thanks to the One true Creator and worship Him, and this worship gives God an opportunity to continue to delay His judgments. But... when we say that turning from sin is part of the free offer of eternal life, we have gotten creative with the stern and authoritative promise Jesus makes to the readers of John’s Gospel. And that is not okay. Repentance (as turning from sin) and belief are two things not one.

Jesus sternly offers life freely.

By first conflating Hell with the day of wrath we end up conflating repentance with belief.

Offer of life Illustration: A (Catholic) Christian missionary lives in the Philippines. She works and lives in poverty in order to bring the love of Christ to the poor. But if that missionary is stopped on the sidewalk and encouraged to receive eternal life by faith alone, or to be justified by faith alone, she may be less than Christian in her verbal response. She might be totally outraged by the idea of not relying partly on the sacraments and partly on good works—both as gritty expressions of her deep faith in Christ and His atoning grace for her. She'd likely be insulted.

Regarding Hell, Free Grace believers put all their eggs in one basket.  We cling to Jesus and His offer of life because of the finality of His work on the Cross.

Regarding the day of wrath, we teach repentance.  Repentance is most desperately needed in many situations, personal, relational, local, regional, cultural, and (yes, even) political.  We need to realize that if we keep clarifying and re-clarifying grace and leave repentance as a minor point to be slipped into our evangelism near the end, we are not teaching the whole Gospel that Jesus left us with.

In my next post I hope to give an example of how the day of wrath might connect powerfully in modern evangelism.

Arminian v Calvinist part 2

by Matthew

Okay, so that was something of a caricature of a debate between and Arminian and a Calvinist. But often debates on the soteriology do form along those lines. Both sides quote verses as if the other side is going to say:

Oh wow, man. I never read that verse before. I guess you guys who believe in perseverance/ possibility of loss of salvation must be right.

Even where more sophisticated exegesis is presented, the results of such debate is predictable. The Calvinist produces all the verses that demonstrate the eteranal security of the believer, while the Arminian produces all the verses that imply loss of salvation.

Both sides have a problem. The Arminian has to deal with a lot of passages that strongly affirm the eteranal security of the believer. If she wants to stand in the Reformation tradition, she also has to reconcile her rejection of eternal security with the doctrine of justification.

The Calvinist may have strong support for eternal security. Hwoever, she has to deal with a mass of warnings about judgment. She has to convince her opponent that these warnings are directed at false professors and not true believers. Even if she succeeds in this she risks the danger of removing the assurance that one is a true believer.

The Calvinist has a further problem in that the weight of history rejects her position.

The early church fathers rejected perseverance. Augustine, the most popular of them amongst Calvinists believed in a sort of perseverance, but he held that true born-again Christians could still be lost (if they were not among the elect). The Roman Catholic church has always rejected perseverance, as has the Eastern Orthodox church. The Anabaptist tradition for the most part rejects it. The Arminians, the Wesleyans and most Pentecostals reject it. All of the pseudo-Christian cults that claim to follow the Bible reject it.

Now it may be that the mass of these people may have been unregenerate. No doubt the majority of them were. However, with the exception of the cultists, they were able to pick up their Bibles and see in them the doctrine of the Trinity. If the Bible so clearly teaches eternal security, why have so many missed it, while still holding to much that is true? Why is it only Reformed, Baptists and some Anglicans (occupying only a fraction of church history) have held to eternal security and perserverance?

For those of us who hold to Free Grace/ Overcomer teaching, this is not so much of a problem. The Bible contains many warnings to regenerate persons. Not warnings of eternal punishment, but warnings of judgment, chastening, premature death, loss of rewards, loss of kingdom inheritance and perhaps exclusion from the millennium (more debateable than the others). It is easy for the careless exegete or the false teacher to twist those warnings into warnings of everlasting punishment.

The goal of consistent Free Grace theology is too synthesize the precious truth of eternal security with the stark reality of judgment upon believers who do not yield their lives in submission and faithful discipleship to Christ.

J.D. Faust on Arminianism

by Matthew

Joe D Faust is the pastor of Kingdom Baptist church. He holds to Millennial Exclusion, a minority position within Free Grace. Faust maintains the radical view, held by such men as GH Pember and Watchman Nee, that unfaithful Christians will be exluded from the Millennial Kingdom and will spend the thousand years in hell, before being restored in eternity.

Faust's views are controversial, yet he articulates his position well and with a degree of graciousness that is surpising in one who holds extrem KJV-Only views.

I would recommend reading Faust's critique of the Arminian views of Dan Corner:

THE ARMINIANISM OF DANIEL D. CORNER REFUTED - Part 1:

THE ARMINIANISM OF DANIEL D. CORNER REFUTED - Part 2

THE ARMINIANISM OF DANIEL D. CORNER REFUTED - Part 3

THE ARMINIANISM OF DANIEL D. CORNER REFUTED - Part 4

THE ARMINIANISM OF DANIEL D. CORNER REFUTED - Part 5

I am proud to be one of Zane Hodges' godchildren

by Matthew

Phil Johnson described Zane Hodges as the 'godfather of antinomianism.' Well, I am proud to be one of his godchildren.

This evening my pastor was giving a lecture on Hebrews. He gave us the usual stuff about inheritance being salvation and the warning passages being for false professors. Afterwards I recommended to him Zane Hodges' commentary on Hebrews in the Bible Knowledge Commentary.

Critics of consistent Free Grace theology give us a lot of hot air about Zane Hodges being the first person to come up with this theology. It means nothing.

God has always raised up individuals and used them to reveal the truths necessary for a particular time.

God raised up Enoch as a testimony to God's judgment on a wicked world. God raised up Moses to reveal Himself to the Hebrews in captivity. God raised up Daniel to reveal God's plans for the time of Gentile dominance. God raised up the apostle Paul to reveal the distinctive truth of the Church as the Body of Christ. God raised up John to reveal the closure of this dispensation and what should follow it.

In more recent history, God has continued to raise up men to serve as a light to the truths of His word. God raised up John Wycliffe to show the need for a turning back to God's word and away from superstition. God raised up Luther to point to the great truth of justification by faith and then He raised up John Calvin to bring more clarity to this doctrine, particularly in relation to the eternal security of the believer. God raised up John Wesley and George Whitefield to show the vital necessity of personal conversion. He raised up John Nelson Darby to show us the distinction between Israel and the Church.

It should hardly be a surprise that God is using Zane Hodges to bring a right understanding of the nature of saving faith. This is the vital truth for this age. This is needed truth for the last days.

As the dispensation closes and we see an ever greater departure from the faith, God has been pleased to give those who are willing to listen a greater understanding of the freeness of grace.

But let us not forget that the precious insights of Zane Hodges also stand on the legacy of Dispensationalism, with its commitment to the heavenly positionn of the believer and the possibility of real assurance through knowledge of the Saviour. The new and blessed doctrines of Free Grace would never have come without the heritage of those men who sought to move on from the milk of the Reformation and to find the meat of the rightly divided Word of God; men such as JN Darby, William Kelly, CI Scofield, LS Chafer and John Walvoord. They discovered the fresh light of God's Word, just as Zane Hodges, Bob Wilkin and Joseph Dillow have discovered new light today.

MAD!

by David Wyatt

No, I'm not mad! The letters stand for "Mid-Acts Dispensationalism." I really don't know that much about the beliefs of those that would align themselves with this doctrine. I have participated in a forum with some of the folks, & for the most part they seem like very warm-hearted believers with a passion for the Rapture of the church. We should certainly agree with them on that, & we should cetainly make it our aim to be ready so as not to be ashamed at His coming. The question I am asking is, what do you folks here at UoG think of this teaching? They basically believe that water baptism is not for this age at all. Otherwise, I believe they would be in pretty much agreement with us, especially on free grace. Any thoughts?